The broad, long term goal of this project is the design and synthesis of simple analogs of the ionophore group of antibiotics. These structures will allow for a more systematic dissection of structure activity relationships than is possible for the more complex natural products, and this information will be useful for the realization of simpler structures of comparable activity with the natural ionophores. In particular, the emphasis will be placed on the development of compounds possessing anti-HIV activity, and for this reason, the initial group of analog structures have been designed by considering ionophore structures which have shown promising anti-HIV activity. An attractive aspect of developing anti-HIV agents based on the ionophore antibiotics relates to the fact that these are already established pharmaceuticals, and as such a great deal of data regarding their pharmacology is available.